Program Background
The Department Equity Action Planning (DEAP) program was a three‑year pilot initiative launched by the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, now Faculty Success, in 2021 to strengthen workload equity across academic units at the University of Denver. Designed to improve transparency, clarify expectations, and build more equitable departmental practices, the DEAP program guided participating departments through a research‑based change process focused on evaluating how faculty workload was distributed, taken up, made visible, and rewarded.
As part of this campuswide equity effort, DEAP teams committed to a year‑long sequence of retreats, workshops, consultations, and internal department meetings. Throughout this process, faculty examined their local workload norms, hosted community conversations, and developed a Department Equity Action Plan tailored to their unit. The program also supported departments with examples of effective strategies, professional‑development opportunities, and training on navigating difficult discussions related to workload equity.
During its active years, the DEAP initiative engaged multiple cohorts and a total of seven university departments. Early teams worked toward creating workload dashboards, administering departmentwide surveys, and presenting final deliverables that documented both findings and actionable next steps. In later cohorts, departments such as Communication Studies, Media, Film & Journalism Studies, and the Graduate School of Professional Psychology continued this work, demonstrating the program’s growing influence across the university.
What began as an NSF‑ADVANCE–informed change model with from the University of Maryland-College Park, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and North Carolina State University, with participating departments at 30 universities, ultimately became a key part of DU’s broader commitment to building equitable, transparent, and sustainable faculty workload systems. By the time the DEAP program concluded its pilot cycle, it had helped departments across campus build clearer expectations, avoid disproportionately burdening historically marginalized faculty, and create structures that supported long‑term equity in faculty labor.
